For ears hear as they list. The world is wide, With wildernesses wherein few abide. Remote from busy marts these joy to dream Some Gods do not disdain to dwell beside! The Seasons Bk. V. vv. 736-746 The pageant of the Seasons! Venus comes; She brings with her, As leader of the revel, winged Zephyr, Spring’s harbinger. And Flora has spread a carpet, finer was never wove, All hues and fragrances, to be trod by the Queen of Love. Next enters red-hot Summer; but its droughts are lightly borne By good Goddess Ceres; for they ripen the standing corn Nought ashamed is She of the dusty sweat upon her brow. Foreseeing her sheaves, how more and heavier they shall grow; Nor even scolds the North-wind; it steels the straw to sustain, By its rough embraces, the weight of the hardening grain. Autumn steps close after; and it too with a God for guide; Hark! shout the vineyards, “Bacchus! Hail to Bacchus!” far and wide. And now Earth’s “No-man’s land!” Spring, Autumn, Summer here and there; While up and down dance the Winds in the Kingdom of the Air. South-easters roar through woods where green leaves whispered yesterday; And thunders the South on meadows that wear the bloom of May. But the Year is waning; in the long chilly Dark it sits; No more, though by mere spasms, it breaks out into merry fits. Sulky and dull it mumbles its tempers in fog and sleet; Its joints are stiff with age; it totters on frost-bitten feet. ’Tis Winter, with a train pinched like itself, and short of breath, That shivers, and, as it moves, rattles its remains of teeth. GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.